57 Shorts Are in the Oscar Game This Year

Last weekend, a total of 57 animated shorts which had qualified to compete in the Oscar race were screened in New York. Thanks to animator Michael Sporn’s (Poe) fantastic blog, we now have the list of these 57 qualifying toons. The New York screening was organized by Patrick Harrison and John Fahr. The number of shorts is a vast jump from two years ago when we only had 33 titles and much better than 2011 when 45 shorts were entered in the race. The Academy animation branch have voted on these shorts and the next stage of the game will only feature 10 titles on the short list (which will probably be announced in the next few weeks). Of those ten, five will make it to the Oscar ballot in January.

We loved seeing some of our favorite shorts of the year popping up on the list, which is a very healthy mix of studio produced titles such as Disney’s Paperman, Fox’s Maggie Simpson in The Longest Daycare and Warner Bros.’ Daffy’s Rhapsody and indies like Hisko Hulsing’s Junkyard, Emma de Swaef and Marc James Roels’ Oh Willy…, Michaela Pavlatova’s Tram and Minkyu Lee’s Adam and Dog.